Lessons
by Lizzy Rebel
Summary: [oneshot, some TY] Lesson One: a summoner must be posed and collected. Lesson Two: A summoner must keep secrets


_Disclaimer:_ I do not own FFX in anyway. They belong to _Squaresoft_ or _Enix_, whatever they're going by now.

**Lessons**

She first began her lessons at the tender age of eleven. It was time, she decided, that she came to terms with the little swear she had seared into her breast when she had watched her father walk away from her. Time to face the music. Destiny was calling.

The warrior monk was her teacher. He was the closet thing to a summoner on the island. He was the only one who knew the rules of the game.

"A summoner must always be posed and collected," he told her with a slight chide in his voice, as if she had already disobeyed him. She had wanted to frown at him, but instead she put a plaintive smile on her face. Already she learned. "A summoner must never show her heart."

She already knew that. Never once had she allowed her true emotions to ever shine through, never completely. Sometimes she could relax in her masquerade, like when she was around Wakka and Lulu and Chappu because they made her laugh, but she was never truly honest with them. She had never let them peek into the inner sanctums of her heart. If they had seen that promise burned in there and if they had seen what she planned to do then they would lock her away, never to see the light again.

Yes, she learned well to hide her emotions.

The warrior monk's second lesson was of secrets. "Summoners are not perfect, they are far from it. They are afraid and they can be weak. But people must see them as strong. A summoner must never let out his or her secrets."

For that lesson she was glad. It saved her many heartaches as she grew. Many heartaches. She, as a summoner, had many secrets. People felt a need to confide in her. They looked at her and wanted to whisper their move horrid secrets into her ear, to pass the burden onto her shoulders.

And she never let those secrets out.

She had never spoken to Wakka and Lulu of what Chappu had told her when she was twelve. It might have made their loss pass easier and helped them progress with their own lives instead of clinging to his, but she took her lessons to heart and never told them what her friend said.

"I don't love Lulu," he had told her as they sat upon slippery rocks over looking the beach. Lulu was down there, currently away from her boyfriend, looking at Datto who Wakka had knocked out with a blitzball… _again_.

She sat there, her legs curled under her chin, and continued to look out at the blue of the sea. "Why me? Why tell me?"

"Because I think ya can understand. I think you know what's it like to feel duty bound to somethin'. I haveta to look after Lulu, ya know? Promised her parents I would, ya?" Chappu admitted before sending one long look at her. Then he stood and made his path down the beach, towards the girl he didn't love.

It was buried deep inside her bosom that day, so much like the vow she had made silently to her passed father. She kept Chappu's secret. She kept it when he went off to fight with an Al Bhed weapon in the Crusades and she kept it when his lover and his brother wept bitterly over his death.

These lessons she was taught by the warrior monk dictated her life. She never stepped out of the safety of their boundaries. She never spoke of her fears or the secrets she learned. She was always calm and collected, a perfect beautiful summoner.

She did fear though. It was a tiny thing that wrapped itself around her throat at night when she had no reason to push it away. Summoners were supposed to be the epitome of self-sacrifice. They were supposed to be willing, even wanting, to throw their lives away for the greater good.

But she didn't. She wanted to live and laugh and have a family and children. She was sinning against her calling, against the Summoners before her. But she yearned for her life and for her happiness. It didn't matter that it was wrong and that she wasn't supposed to feel this way, she did.

Never, though, did she ever tell anyone of her fears and worries and thoughts. No, Lesson One had been to keep those locked away in her deepest closet. Every morning, with the gentle rising of the sun over the blue waters, she slid a mask over her face and pretended like dying was the thing she yearned for most.

The Lessons molded her into the woman she was today. The woman who was the prefect example of a summoner, the daughter of a High Summoner, the next one to bring about the Calm. People looked to her as a leader, as a hope, and her heart and her pride would not allow her to fail them.

But then _he_ blew into her life, like a mad tornado that wrecked everything in its path and left everything once believed to be true shattered. He turned her world upside down and made her hard earned self desert her.

What would have happened had he not washed up on the shores of the island? Would she have continued on with her Pilgrimage and scarified her life for the masses? Or would she have married the Maester to give the people more hope? Was there any one way to be sure?

All she knew was that when he first looked into her eyes, shock written there, surprised at her being so young, her life had never been the same. Her heart was always a pitter-patter and her palms were always damp with nervousness and every time she looked into the depths of his blue eyes everything seemed to fade, even Sin itself.

The Lessons that had been so important to her in her life faded with every new word the fell from his lips. She broke the rules for him, the lessons she went against all for him.

She had been waiting for him. She had been yearning for this boy to waltz into her life and give her an excuse to go against the Lessons that constricted her life. And she loved him for it. She loved him for making her think thoughts that were forbidden.

With him she never wore the mask. All he had to do was ask and she would not be able to do anything but speak the truth to him. She wanted to share every secret she knew to him, to whisper to him like others had whispered to her. He was her Summoner, a summoner of love and of hope and of passion. Things that had been foreign to her before.

He tore down her Lessons and her beliefs and put up new ones. He made her believe her yearning for life, to live, was just fine. He made her want to live all that more. Would he not be with her if she lived? Could she not be happy with him if she lived? He was the first to ever make her want her to break the promise she had made to her father.

This young man gave her hope, a thing she had never felt before. Hope that everything was going to be fine, that she could have her life and peace without any sacrifice. He gave her the greatest gift of all: belief.

At the same time he made her understand the people she fought to protect all that much more. Now she understood why Summoners were so important to the people. Not because they would defeat Sin, but because they brought hope. They brought belief. Belief that were something better, hope that it was close. And because of it she could not turn away from her promise, no matter how much she wanted to. How could she when she finally knew who important hope was?

But she still continued to believe in this young man's ideals. She believed him when he said they would find a way to beat Sin without any more death. She believed him when he said he would be with her always, not just until the end. He made her believe in life and love and hope and faith.

And she continued to believe him even as he threw himself into the gold-lit sky, disappearing from her. And even when the tears slipped passed her eyes and onto her porcelain cheeks, she believed in him. She would believe him forever, for his imprint would always be on her lips and his smell in her nostrils and his hands on her arms. His memory would not fade, it would never fade.

There was one important lesson he had left her with. One lesson that she would continue to live by for the rest of her life. His lesson to her.

As a Summoner she was meant to die, but as a woman she was meant to live. And she was, in the very bottom of heart, a woman.

And she would live by his lesson, forever.

**Finis**

**Word Count:** 1554

**Time:** ah… I dunno… took me two years to post it…

**Beta:** ran away in terror (Final Fantasy hater)

**Couples:** Tidus/Yuna

**Genre:** Angst/Romance

**Status:** one-shot (complete)

**Author:** Lizzy Rebel

**Characters/Style:** Yuna angst reflective piece

**Notes:** While cleaning out my old documents in my old computers I stumble upon this and thought I'd edit it a little and then post it. Also inspired me to write some FFX-2 fics. R&R and then get on with you're life.


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